Self-Organization and The Hierarchy of Institutions

The occupations around the world do not rely on the bureaucratic organizational schemes that Weber described, and they actively fight against the increasing expansion of Ellulian technique. The occupations are self-organizing, they are rhizomatic, and they do not rely on individual office-holders or positions. The #ows vocabulary has words for groups (e.g. General Assembly, working group) and for organizing procedure (e.g. point of information, blocking concern) but there are no words that describe individuals. Everyone is an occupier. Whereas hierarchical institutions rely on predictable environments and hierarchies of power and resource-allocation, self-organizing systems rely on distributed resources and relatively autonomous actors.